The New Self

0:10Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast for Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church is a Reformed Confessional Baptist Church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church or for directions, you can visit us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

0:40Hello and good morning. Again to you all, please open with me. We're going to cover verses 17 through verse 24 this morning. As we begin then to close out chapter 4 over the next couple, two to three weeks, two weeks probably, and move into chapter 5, we need to prepare ourselves to hear from God through Paul about these very specific ways that this new life in Christ is to be lived out, which is very fast approaching to us. And we see Paul moving in that direction through his exhortation this morning of the demand that the gospel puts on our lives to put off the old self and to put on, that is, to embrace and to live this new self, this new life that we have now in Christ. And this week really marks, as many commentators have pointed out, the last major shift in this epistle. We know that those first three chapters, as we talked about for many weeks, were primarily concerned with doctrine, expounding upon the grace and the goodness of God in our adoption and in our salvation. He then shifted, as we talked about for a number of weeks, the church, the body of Christ, focusing on that idea of the body with many members, a diverse set of people, but all in unity in and through Christ. Remember then I said that Paul made clear that this unity that was real, this was present within the body of Christ, and we just don't fully see it yet. And our command then is not to create unity, but rather to embrace it and not destroy it, that unity that has been won for us in Christ. And that will apply, this whole idea of unity, of wholeness or oneness is a theme that very much applies to this morning. So keep that at the top of your mind. Again, this idea that as the body of Christ, we are not simply a collection of individual members. But we are joined together. And being joined together, we are a declaration to the powers in the heavenly places of the glory and of the majesty and of the wisdom of God. That was Ephesians 3, verse 10, where he says, Paul, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and to the authorities in the heavenly places. Again, hold on to that truth this morning of unity and oneness. So this is the last shift then, moving into to look at how does it look? What must we do now to walk according to this new life? Being connected and resurrected in Christ. And this touches then on one of the most, or perhaps the major debate and the divide in the church today. And that is, to what extent is the church able to press the imperatives of Scripture upon the life of the saint? It is a gospel of grace alone. Amen. Through faith alone. So does that mean that we don't get to tell, or don't have the authority to tell the body how it should behave? That is, the church? Does it mean that we do not have the authority to tell the people what they are required or what the required implications of the gospel are? And certainly there is much nuance there. There are many ditches that can be found very quickly. But generally speaking, we will say, as Paul says, and as Paul teaches here, that the gospel of grace, that is, salvation totally apart from any merit we could ever hope to obtain. It still puts demands on our life. Not do this or else, or do this and be saved, but because of this, now do this. And so that's what we will begin to consider as we look at the text this morning. So stand with me. Let's read our verses this morning. Ephesians 4, starting in verse 12. Sorry, 17. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, they are alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. Due to their hardness of heart, they have become callous, and have given themselves up to sensuality and greedy to every to practice every kind of evil. But that is not the way that you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on your new self, or the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, we pray and ask for your spirit to be present within us, Lord, and amongst us this morning. That we would truly be renewed this morning, our minds renewed, or that we would be willing and able by your spirit to put on the new self that is made after Christ in righteousness, in his likeness. It is in his name that we pray. Amen. And perhaps the most fundamental maxim of Christian education or education in general is that true education is the education of the whole person. We've heard this. Our Charlotte Mason family has certainly heard this. We are not just simply brains, we're not simply emotions, we're not just hearts, we're not just a mechanical working. We are a complete system. We are a system of complex workings, including the mind, including the body, and the soul. We said a very similar thing about the church a few weeks ago, didn't we? The church is not just a collection of individuals, independent individuals, which each of them doing their own thing, right, in their own way. But rather the church is one body, one whole body. Made up of many members that collectively they are the testimony of the wisdom and the glory of God. We say very much the same thing about the Holy Scriptures, don't we? That these words that we have with us is not simply a collection of 66 individual books written by a varied number of people over thousands and thousands of years. But this is a cohesive library of books containing within it the grand redemption story of the author and the creator of all things. And turning then to our focus this morning, when it comes to our lives, or perhaps even more focused, but also our lives in general, but our spiritual lives, we tend to fall into the very same things that I've demonstrated that we attempt to avoid in those other areas. This is perhaps a phrase that I have made up. I will patent it. This is what I am calling methodical compartmentalization. This is a deconstruction of everything about us into all these various parts. In hopes that if we can find that one gear, that one thing, that one fix that isn't quite working right, then magically we will all be made whole again. We think things like, well, I am the way that I am in this one particular area because of all of these things that have happened to me in the past. Or we think I always respond like this and this certain situation because of these things. Perhaps the most common, I only act that way because you act that way. Essentially saying that all we are is a disassociated series of reactions. Always looking for some external fix to what's going on inside of us. This is a loop of self-justification that happens when we break ourselves up into all these little pieces, when we reduce ourselves to merely just a set of chain reactions. But a bunch of pieces just bouncing off one another. Is that how the Bible describes personhood? The glory and wonder of the gospel is that it concerns itself, it redeems the whole person. It truly changes and redeems the whole person. Regeneration by the Spirit is a complete rebirth. It's a new person. Your whole self was renewed in Christ, so our call then is to put off the old self. Because that's not who you are any longer. And to put on the new self that is redeemed and reborn in Christ. God's word says that in Christ we are new creations. That is recreations of that which was formerly dead, broken. You are, then, as a whole, mind, body, and soul being transformed, truly, being renewed after the likeness of Christ. We say that a good educator, as I've alluded to, trains and grows everything about the person, not just their brains, right? The same way as some of you know, a good coach doesn't just teach plays or formations, but he shapes and makes good men, good people. They make movies about that, actually. I've heard it said also that a good doctor doesn't just treat symptoms, doesn't just find problems and fix them, but they heal the whole person. They make them well again. And so for the Christian, it can't just be about justifying our actions or segmenting ourselves in hopes of making those small behavioral changes, like we're just the sum of these various personalities or behaviors based on a myriad of unknown or unknowable conditions. This is about grasping the reality that in Christ and because of Christ we have been made new. We are being transformed into something new, into a new person. This is about the whole of ourselves, our natures, our minds, our bodies, our wills, everything being renewed into the likeness of Christ. Do you believe that? Do you believe that that is even possible? It is. Because we are the ones who in our sin have fractured our existence. And Christ is making us new again. He's making us whole again. He's putting us back right together again. And I believe that he is actually doing that. Even now. So won't you allow that transformational work to take place in your life? Surrender to that this morning. Well, as we consider then this transformation of our whole selves and the necessary implications of this transformation, we first must look then at our former self. This is starting in verse 17. Now, this I say, and testify to that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is in them. Due to their hardness of heart, they have become callous, giving themselves over to sensuality, and greedy to practice every kind of evil. In biblical categories, there are really only two types of people. There's dead people, and there's alive people. And we like to vastly overcomplicate that. As I've said earlier, we like to compartmentalize, we like to divide up into all sorts of different varied ways and kinds of people, and introverts, and extroverts, and all of the various personalities. We love to put people in various boxes. But the Bible really only concerns itself with are you dead in sin? Or are you alive in Christ? You were, or perhaps still are, dead in sin. Trust none of you are here dead in sin. And that category, when you were, carried with it some very specific personality traits that our word outlines. He gives five as I see them in the text, and those are futile in mind, darkened in understanding, alienated in ignorance, callous, hardened, and given to sensuality and impurity. We must consider these things, these negative things that define that old man. We must do that in obedience to his word before we move on then to the new selves, because it is given to us. We were futile in mind, Paul says. The old man. Futile in mind will be forgotten. Because he didn't do anything of any lasting purpose. That seems quite grim and hopeless, doesn't it? There's more. Paul says the old man has a darkened understanding. I don't often get, as you know, too deep in the woods of the Greek, mostly because I have no idea what I'm talking about with respect to uh the Greek language, except that what really smart people tell me. Here though, is something is very much worth pointing out, so I need to look in your text then. In verse 18. My version says they are darkened in their understanding. If you have the N A S B or the KJV, it might say having been darkened. In the Greek, this is a participle in the perfect tense and in the passive voice. If you're taking notes, you can write that down. Perfect tense and passive voice. And perfect is that tense that speaks of past actions with continuing results. And I'll give you an example. In this sentence, the married couple comes to church. The married couple comes to church. Married there is in the perfect tense. The couple who came to church was at some point in the past married, and they remain so today. So when they do something or when they go somewhere, they do so as a married couple. Okay? Past action, continuing results. Passive, then, is that voice meaning not something that is actively being done, hence the word passive, but rather a condition that always is. The unbeliever is not trying to be darkened in every moment by their actions, but rather their actions are a result of their condition having been darkened. A passive. Something has happened in the past for all man. Including the fall, a sin nature that we inherited as a result of the fall, and the transgressions that we have committed, and that past action carries with it continual results. That is, our ability to reason properly has been corrupted. Our moral reflection has been bent. Our capacity for discernment was broken. Our ability to seek godly wisdom was stunted. We were. Apart from the source of wisdom, separated from the source of all knowledge, the unbeliever actually and truly doesn't know anything. They may think they know things. And they may have, by general revelation, get close to the truth on some things, but they are ignorant. They're lost to reality. And the unbeliever is in this state because of a separation from God. An alienation, Paul says, who is the source of all truth and beauty and goodness. And listen, hear me. Often we reverse this in our thinking. And we assume that one's alienation from God is due to their ignorance about things. And so if we could just educate them enough about the things of God, if we could just teach them enough, if we could get them close enough to God, then we could heal them of that alienation and of that separation. It's the same error, though, that we've been talking about about dividing the person into various parts. It doesn't work like that. The person is really just a mind. And that mind is just ignorant. And if we can just educate it, then we'll fix the problem. The problem is not the mind only. The problem is the person. The whole person is the problem. The whole person is futile and darkened and alienated from God, and that ignorance is not the cause of the alienation. Rather, the alienation is the cause of the ignorance. The remedy. You must be born again. You must be made new. To be healed, you must be made new. You must be brought near to God. That separation, that access to Him must be mended. This is the offensiveness of the gospel. Must be born again. Because of the offensiveness of the gospel, the next thing that Paul says in verse 19 of our text, they have become callous. The old man becomes callous. What a truth. To tell them that you are in fact not enough. To tell them that girl, you can wash your face a million times. Your soul is still wretched. You're still alienated from God. That you aren't beautiful just the way you are. That you are repulsive in the sight of God in your state of sin. That you have no one to blame for your sin and your corruption but yourself. The fruit of that truth. And the heart of the unbeliever, the heart of the one who is not ready to hear it, is to be hardened, to be calloused. They grow scales over their hearts in bitterness. Because this is a constant jab at the guilt they don't want to face. So they build a calloused shell against it. And when that callousness fully sets in, as our text says next, the old man runs headlong into the passions and the desires of his flesh. To further mask his guilt, cope with his bitterness. He gives himself to impurities, to sensualities, to the desires of his heart. Why? Because he's rejecting all that's good, all that's holy, all that's godly. Because he's condemned. So often in our rebellion we embrace the very things that deep down we know are wrong. We know they're going to harm us. But we're so dug in in our callousness and our pride and our rebellion and our stubbornness. What choice do we have but just to continue to press further into that old man? This is the life cycle of every unbeliever. Not only because we can clearly see it, but because this is what God's word says is going to happen. What does happen to everyone who does not follow Christ? Who does not come to Christ? Everyone who is not born again, everyone who is not made new by the Spirit will indeed follow that same pattern, and they do. Thanks and praise be to God. He does not leave us in that state. He did not leave us in that state. Nor does he leave us to pull ourselves up out of that state. But does indeed by his spirit regenerate us out of that state. By faith in Christ, man does not have to stay there, church. There is a new birth that we can experience and with it receive a new identity, a new self. And we know that Paul is contrasting these traits in relation to the old self and the new self in terms of an identity. Because Paul says here, and he doesn't even mention it explicitly, but he shows it in passing. Verse 17 now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. That you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. I thought these were the Gentiles, though. Did I lie to you? When I told you that this letter was written to the Gentiles? But now Paul is telling them not to walk as the Gentiles do. And some translations, I'm not sure if the NKJV does, I think it does, in error, insert the word other in that verse, saying and translating you must no longer walk as the other Gentiles do. But that is not in the Greek. And I think that very much minimizes the whole argument that Paul is making and is going to make. And that is that this radical transformation into Christ is a whole person identity transformation. Such that you are no longer who you were. You're no longer defined by who you were anymore. This is important, church. So that no one may ever say to you again, oh, there's the sinner, there's the adulterer, there's the liar, there's the prideful, there's the arrogant one. That's not who you are anymore. By the grace of God, such things don't define you. They can't. They mustn't. That is objectively not you anymore. So the call then is to shut off those old labels and be made new. To be reborn, to live as who you truly are. And this is the new man. Verse 20. And following. But this is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to the former man of your life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness. And holiness. This is the blessed gospel. This is the great and holy word that makes us whole. It's not primarily about a behavioral change, is it? It's not. It's about being remade into a new man in Christ, into a new woman in Christ. You want to think about it in resurrection language, this is about a dead person being resurrected to life again. And Paul uses that put-off, put-on language. I can't help but think, at least in some respects, he has the garden narrative at view here. We've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. That time in which the gospel was first preached, way back in Genesis 3, that covenant of grace through the seed of the woman was first given. In their shame, Adam and Eve attempted to cover that shame by what? By putting on fig leaves, which was a man-made covering, wholly insufficient to cover their shame. But God. Always but God. And through the shedding of the blood of animals, God made for them a better covering that they put on, or that he put on them. Those were skins from an animal. This was a shadow of the true and lasting covering that God would offer to his people in Christ. When at the hands of a wicked and rebellious people, our Lord was nailed to a tree and shed his blood, that he himself, the Lord of glory, his body and his blood would be that better and eternal covering, that by the grace of God we may put on. Indeed, we put on Christ. So I say to us, in our shame, in the whole of our shame, mind, body, and soul, put off the old man. Put off the old ways in which you hide and you cover your shame, because those things are only masking the guilt. Even the supposed righteous things that you may do, they only promote a self-made religion now, and are in fact no value of stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Nor are they any value in truly covering your shame. Put off the old man and all of his sins. Put to death all that is earthly in you, and put on the new life that is created in Christ. That new man that is created in righteousness and in holiness, as Paul says. This is the new self that we are to put on. The new man that Christ has made. Putting on the new self in Christ. This is the only way to fix all of those problems, all of those issues that we discussed at length. It's the only way. Dying to that old self and being remade or being recreated again in Christ and righteousness and in holiness. This is the only way. And this is no doubt humbling, because it tells us that we are not right apart from God. We are broken, we're futile, we're darkened, we're ignorant, we're calloused. We must be born again. Our only hope is not an educated mind. Our only hope is not better habits. Our only hope is to be made again. And further humbling, then, is that this new birth, this recreation, it only comes from God. I've quoted uh in that last few points there, I quoted Colossians extensively. I'm not going to turn there, I won't ask you to turn there. But I quoted specifically Colossians chapter 3, where Paul uses very similar language to what we hear with respect to the put-off, put on. But interestingly, there in Colossians chapter 3, when he applies this same put-off, put-on language, he grounds it in something perhaps unexpected for the common ear. Colossians 3, verse 12, Paul says this, and quote, put on then as God's chosen ones. Holy and beloved. He then goes on to list all of those qualities that we should put on in light of this new birth that we have been given. I want to make sure we don't miss this church. God Himself is the source of this new life. You didn't get this blessed new spiritual life because you were better at changing your spiritual clothes than everyone else. You didn't receive a renewal because you, by some method, unlocked that hidden thing that was holding you back. You didn't. By hypnosis or some other cognitive behavioral therapy, suddenly fix all that was wrong with you. You put on Christ. You are renewed because the King of glory sent his spirit into your heart to resurrect you from the dead. It was by his will and by his power and by his grace that you were transferred from death to life. From the grave to glory. It was his work and his mercy and for his glory. So I ask you then to consider this deeply, Church. Having been brought into this new life by the will, by the power, and by the grace of God, will you be perfected by some other means? Galatians 3, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed and crucified. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Paul says. So I conclude then with this. As we move into the coming weeks and we're pressed further, we're challenged more to live radically different as these new selves, these new calls that we have been given. We must always remember to come back again and again to the gospel of grace. And this call to put on the new self to live as you were called is not easier. It's not attainable in your own strength. It's not any easier or any more attainable in your own strength to be renewed than it was to wake up your cold and calloused heart to begin with. The call then to be renewed, mind, body, and soul is a real imperative, church. It is a call. As real as the call to repent and to trust in Christ for your salvation and for eternal life, is this call to be sanctified, to be changed, to be made new. We must take the call seriously. You must be born again. And you must put on Christ. You must be transformed into his likeness. But maybe we say, you don't know my past. You don't know my struggles. You don't know how I was raised. You don't know my habits. You don't know my personality. I'm an Enneagram five. I'm too stubborn. I'm never going to change. At church, no more excuses. No more excuses because I know how difficult it is, and it is to put on the new self. I know the struggle against all the things. It's difficult. So difficult, in fact, that it is impossible for us. We can't do it. Thanks and praise to be to our God and Father. Our Savior Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. With man, that which is impossible. With God, all things are possible. With God, the whole man will be made new. With God, his church will be brought into the fullness. With God, your whole self, your whole body, everything will be made new. Behold, he says in Revelation, I am making all things new. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you again for your word this morning. We pray and ask, Lord, would you help us to confess all of those false things that we have tried to cover our shame with, Lord? All those methods that we have tried to renew ourselves, Lord. Would we trust in you this morning? Would we trust in your spirit? The same spirit that resurrected us from the dead, Lord, we trust in that same spirit to transform us into the likeness of Christ. Lord, we confess that we have tried too often in our own strength to do that which only you can do. Forgive us, Lord, for not trusting in you alone. Lord, and we ask and we plead, make us new. Let that be the desire of our heart that we truly be transformed into the likeness of Christ. Or break down our stubbornness, our pride, our unwillingness, that we would surrender wholly to you. In full assurance that you would indeed make us new. But that we be made into the image of Christ. So we ask that this will please transform us and make us new. Ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.